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During a first medical visit to the UK, a fetal surgery was undertaken to repair the spinal defects of two babies with spina bifida. Mothers and babies are said to be recovering well.
In summer, a team of 30 people from UCLH (University College London), UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), in partnership with Leuven University Hospitals in Belgium, carried out separate operations on the spinal cord of two abnormally developed babies. were still in the womb.
Previously, mothers had to go abroad for surgery or their babies had to be operated on within 48 hours of birth to repair the spinal defect.
Better luck in life
According to UCLH, fetal surgery gives babies with spina bifida a much better chance in life than postnatal surgery.
Prof. Jan Deprest, a fetal surgeon at UCLH and Leuven, said: "The closure of spina bifida in the uterus with the help of this method is an alternative to postnatal surgery and that It has been shown that it improves outcomes in the short and medium term, and in fetal surgery the defect is closed sooner, thus avoiding damage to the spinal cord in the last third of pregnancy. "
Years of preparation
The fetal operation was launched by the Philadelphia Children's Hospital in the United States, which has conducted more than 320 similar operations since 2011.
UCLH and the GOSH team train with Professor Deprest and his team in Belgium, where more than 40 operations, some of which have been on UCLH English patients, have been conducted since 2012.
The team that operated the two babies in the UK was coordinated by Professor Anna David, Consultant in Fetal Medicine, Institute for Women's Health and UCLH UCLH. She said: "We have been working for three years to offer this service to UK patients through the establishment of a prenatal therapy center at UCL, UCLH and GOSH.
"Our willingness to offer this service was based on the results of a large randomized multicenter randomized controlled trial conducted in the United States, which compared prenatal closure to postnatal closure, as well as the observation that surgery could be reproduced safely in Europe through appropriate training.
The authors of the American study found that prenatal closure was associated with a 50% reduction in the need for surgical shunting in the newborn and a significant improvement in function. motor at the age of 30 months. "
Professor Paolo De Coppi of the UCL's Great Ormond Street Infant Health Institute said: "The reduction in the number of shunts is particularly important because the long-term follow-up of children who have had prenatal closure in The uterus suggests that brain function, mobility, and total independence were higher in nonshulled children than those shunted by the age of 5 years. "
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